Ailing Algeria Leader, 81, Announces a Fifth Presidential Run

Ailing Algeria Leader, 81, Announces a Fifth Presidential Run

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Supporters of the National Liberation Front, the political party of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, urged him to run for a fifth term at a rally in Algiers on Saturday.CreditCreditEPA, via Shutterstock

By The Associated Press

Feb. 10, 2019

ALGIERS — Algeria’s 81-year-old president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been infirm since a stroke in 2013, is planning to run in April’s presidential elections, the state news agency, APS, reported on Sunday.

A record number of people are planning to run for president this year, amid growing uncertainty about whether Mr. Bouteflika is fit for another term after almost two decades in charge of the gas-rich North African nation.

In the two weeks since the electoral process began, 186 people have requested the documents needed to declare their candidacy. That is more than double the number of potential candidates at this stage in the last presidential campaign, in 2014.

Most are unlikely to get the signatures required to formally get on the April 18 ballot. But the range of candidates suggests wide frustration with the status quo.

Even before Mr. Bouteflika announced that he planned to seek a fifth five-year term, his fitness for office hadbeenquestioned, as the 2014 election came a year after a stroke left him speaking and moving with difficulty and largely in a wheelchair.

He has been seen in public only a few times a year throughout his fourth term — yet analysts say that many Algerians would most likely vote for him again, for fear of the instability that his departure could unleash.

Algeria’s Western allies have also expressed concern about a political earthquake in the country, Africa’s largest and home to 42 million people, and where an affiliate of Al Qaeda has targeted foreigners in the past.

Among Mr. Bouteflika’s top challengers are former Prime Minister Ali Benflis, the runner-up in 2014 and today’s main opposition candidate; the influential retired Gen. Ali Ghediri; and the leader of a moderate Islamist party, Abderrazak Makri.

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Mr. Bouteflika voting in parliamentary elections in 2017. He has been seen in public only a few times a year throughout his fourth termCreditRyad Kramdi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The leaders of several small political parties from across the spectrum also hope to run — along with many Algerians who have no previous political experience.

Salah Kemmach, a would-be candidate, said he wanted to run because he was born the day former President Houari Boumediene died, in 1978. “For me, it’s a sign of destiny” he said in a video that has been widely shared on social media.

Another candidate, a former street cleaner from the western city of Oran, said he wanted to be president “to eat steak.”

To get on the ballot, candidates must gather 60,000 signatures of citizens or 6,000 signatures of elected officials, spread out over 25 of Algeria’s 48 administrative departments.

While some dismiss the would-be candidates as nothing more than carnival jesters, Mohamed Laggab, a political-science professor at Algiers University, said the huge number of possible contenders was a sign of degradation in Algerian politics.

“Political practices have fallen very low,” he said. “When holders of dirty money buy Parliament seats with billions, when people implicated in legal scandals find themselves in visible political posts, when people with no intellectual experience and no political conscience want to become president, minister, senator — then you shouldn’t be surprised to see today this type of candidate.”

Corruption has long eaten away at public trust in Algeria, from its opaque energy sector to the highest levels of politics. Dirty money scandals mired the 2017 parliamentary election, with the son of the governing party leader suspected of taking bribes in exchange for spots on the party’s candidate list.

Other parties said they had been approached by people offering to drum up signatures for potential candidates in exchange for cash.

Mr. Bouteflika won the 2014 election with 81 percent of the vote despite not appearing in his own campaign. He is credited with helping to unite the country after a devastating civil war in the 1990s between Islamic insurgents and the military that left around 200,000 people dead.

But the country and its people remain scarred by the years of violence. Algeria still struggles with sporadic extremism, and its struggling economy is heavily dependent on volatile world oil prices.